SFIAAFF: ABDUCTION The Megumi Yokota Story
There was a lot of gentle sobbing, some out and out bawling and lots of grown men surreptitiously wiping their eyes at the Kabuki Theatre on Tuesday night. At one point we were distracted from our own sniveling by the sound of low-level keening coming from the row behind us and the realization the whole theatre was erupting in choked-back sobs and loud sniffles.
Abduction is a documentary about the 1977 kidnapping of 13-year-old Japanese school girl, Megumi Yokota and the decades-long odyssey her parents go through to get to the bottom of her disappearance. Chris Sheridan and Patty Kim—the husband and wife documentarians -- lay out the events surrounding Megumi's disappearance and the disappearance of other Japanese citizens between 1977 and 1982. More than two decades after she goes missing, North Korea admitted to the kidnapping of 13 Japanese nationals—including Megumi—but only after intense pressure and relentless haranguing from abductee families who started to piece together the story of the disappearances themselves.
Apparently the kidnapped Japanese citizens were used to teach language and culture to North Korean spies so that they could pass as Japanese. Random individuals were snatched off streets and beaches, stuffed into sacks and loaded on to ships headed for North Korea. A North Korean defector and former spy tells the heartbreaking story of Megumi stuffed into a dark hole in the ship, throwing-up from motion-sickness and scratching the doors until her fingernails bled and came-off calling for her mother the whole time.
SFist MiHi, contributing
Image from the Abduction site
The Yokatas are ordinary people who rise to the occasion under extraordinary circumstances and their determination and relentless devotion to their missing daughter is heart-breaking, but the story of little people making a big impact only slightly mitigates the horror of the situation.
There was one light-hearted moment. Immediately following a scene where sweet little Mrs. Yokata meets with Senate Majority Leader, Bill Frist, Mrs. Yokata is shown talking about her trip to the U.S. and remarking on how big we all are and our big square-shaped behinds and how she doesn't know how we all get around being so huge and lumbering. The whole theatre erupted into belly-aching laughter. She was so charming but mostly we were all so relieved to be laughing. Trust us, we were never so happy to be called big-butted and enormous.
After the screening there were many questions for the filmmakers and lots of interesting footnotes about the people we'd met in the movie. The only strange part was that one of the filmmakers, Patty Kim was weirdly playful and glib which struck a dissonant cord with us because the mood in the theatre was so somber. Maybe it's her former weathergirl persona intruding at an inappropriate moment. In any event, she and her husband have made one very powerful documentary.